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User blog:Pinkguy the b0ss/Spyro: Year of the Dragon Review
What's up my Shreks, it's me DiamondMinerStudios, and today I'm here to review one of the finest 3D platformers ever created - Spyro: Year of the Dragon for the PS1, since I just fully completed it today. Let's begin. By the late 1990s, Insomniac Games' Spyro the Dragon series was a huge success. It was proof that a collectathon could be done on the Playstation and done well. Beginning in November 1999, Insomniac began development on the ultimate Spyro experience. While developing the game, Insomniac took inspiration from a variety of other titles, including Crash Bandicoot and Doom. Development of Spyro 3 lasted until September 2000, and it was released on October 24, 2000. The name of the game was a no-brainer - 2000 was the Chinese Year of the Dragon, Spyro is a dragon, BAM - Spyro: Year of the Dragon. While the game was considered the best Spyro game in its day (from what I can gather), in retrospect fans of the series have been a bit more mixed in their opinons. Some consider Spyro 3 to be the best in the series. Others say the game is good, but pales in comparison to Spyro 1 and 2. Still more people decisively place it between the other two. It all comes down to preference. So, what do I think of this game? Before I start, I want to state that this is the only Spyro game I've completed so far, so there won't be any comparisons between games because that would be unfair. With that said, let's dive into the review proper. Story Fairly simple, just like most other platformers, but a bit more in-depth. One night, an evil sorcerer's apprentice, Bianca, sneaks into the Dragon Realms from Spyro 1 and steals all of the dragon eggs. She takes them to a Sorceress, who lives in the Forgotten Realms. The next morning, the dragons begin to panic because of the missing eggs. They ask Spyro and his best dragonfly friend Sparx to go to the Forgotten Realms to get them back. Another one of Spyro's closest friends, Hunter the Cheetah, decides to come along with him to help out. Once in the Forgotten Realms, Spyro discovers that the place's magic is gone, and that several animal inhabitants were imprisoned by the Sorceress, who entrusted the greedy bear Moneybags to guard them. Thus, Spyro and Sparx begin their quest to collect all the dragon eggs, free the world's animals, defeat the Sorceress, and restore all the magic to the Forgotten Realms. As the story progresses, however, Bianca slowly begins to question the morality of the Sorceress' motives, revealing her true nature. Eventually, the Sorceress lets loose that she plans to kill the dragons and use their wings to gain immortality. This is the final straw for Bianca, and she runs away from the Sorceress in order to help Spyro and friends defeat her. Once at the final area of the realms, Midnight Mountains, Spyro confronts the Sorceress and defeats her fairly easily. After this, though, Spyro realizes he still has a few eggs to find. Unfortunately, he has to do this alone because Hunter fell in love with Bianca, and all the animals he freed are occupied. Making his way to the Super Bonus Round, the Sorceress' secret treasure stash, Spyro collects the remaining gems in order to defeat the Sorceress. Once he gets all of them, he faces off against her in a UFO over a deadly lake of lava. After defeating her, Spyro gets the last egg, and returns home to the Dragon Realms. Honestly, I really enjoyed this story. It's a bit more than what your usual platformer has. It's not anything amazing by any means, but it certainly gets the job done. Ok, now to talk about what I really want to discuss - the gameplay. Gameplay This game has some of the best gameplay I've experienced in a 3D platformer so far. First off, the level design is supremely well-done. It's open-ended like every collectathon should be, and has a nice amount of platforming. Each level also contains its share of moments where you feel like a genius - "Aha" moments, if you will. This is the kind of stuff I look for in a 3D platformer, and Year of the Dragon delivers it exceptionally well. Second, the pace of the game is razor-tight. Each of the levels can be completed fairly quickly, especially if you know what you're doing. Even if you get stuck finding a gem, you could always use Sparx's treasure finder to show you their locations. One minor issue is that you can't unlock it until the third world. However, there is a way around that - there is a cheat code that you can enter in the pause menu to get the treasure finder early (original Black Label version: Right, Right, Left, Left, Right, Right, Left, Left, Circle, Circle, Circle; Greatest Hits version: R1, R2, L2, L1, R1, R2, L2, L1, Circle, Circle, Circle). The fact that this code exists pretty much makes the lack of the treasure finder right away a non-issue. Third, there is an immense amount of variety. Scattered around each level, there are several magic gates. Entering one will lead you to a minigame. These can range from skateboarding to a platforming puzzle to destroying submarines in poisonous water. In addition to these, there are four animal companions that can be freed in each of the four hubworlds - Sheila (a kangaroo), Sgt. Byrd (a penguin), Bentley (a yeti), and Agent 9 (a monkey). Each has their own playstyle - Sheila focuses on platforming, Sgt. Byrd on flying, Bentley on melee combat and puzzles, and Agent 9 on first-person and third-person shooting - and each level contains at least one minigame with one of them. There are also Sparx minigames in the hubworlds, which play like an arcade-style top-down shooter. While I may not like every single one of these minigames, the grand majority of them are very enjoyable experiences. Fourth, and what really solidifes this game's excellence, is definitely the controls. Hot mama, do these feel satisfying. Spyro alone controls super smoothly, in addition to all of the alternate playstyles..... with the exception of the skateboarding and maybe Sgt. Byrd (who feels a bit stiff, but controls fine). Spyro's turning can also take a bit of getting used to, since he doesn't turn on a dime. But, besides that, Spyro 3 has some of the best controls I've ever had the pleasure of using. They aren't as good as the likes of Super Mario Sunshine, but they sure do come damn close. Quickly, though, one mildly annoying thing is that certain areas are locked off until you beat a world, making you backtrack if you want to fully complete the world. Thankfully, Spyro 3's levels are very much built for backtracking, as they are all shaped like a donut of sorts. This mitigates any anger that may come from being required to backtrack to obtain missing gems and eggs, so the backtracking can only annoy me so much. So, now all my thoughts on the general gameplay are complete, let's discuss the difficulty. Difficulty This game has some great difficulty design. Apart from some blemishes I'll mention shortly, Spyro 3 has excellent difficulty balancing and a very smooth difficulty curve. While not punishingly hard, Spyro 3 is definitely not a game that holds your hand. The levels, minigames, and boss fights can get quite challenging, especially in the game's latter half, but that's to be expected. In order to balance this out, the game includes a few elements that make it fair. You can save the game from the pause menu whenever you want, and your lives count is saved on your file. You also get to take four hits before you die, and health refills are easy to come by. Now, despite this excellent design, it does hiccup on occasion. While the vast majority of the levels and minigames are well-designed, fair, and fun, you may encounter one from time to time that makes you want to rip out your pubic hair with a rusty spoon. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Lost Fleet. I was stuck on this level for over an hour because of some annoying minigames (ESPECIALLY the skateboard race with Hunter) and annoying setpieces (for instance, the poison water that damages you when you touch it). A few other annoying minigames include Bentley boxing, Sheila's escort mission in Spooky Swamp, and the Sparx level in Midnight Mountains. However, the one that I absolutely despise is a minigame in one of the best levels in the game, Bamboo Terrace. Why is that? It's a damn turret segment. If there's one style of gameplay that I hate, it's these things. This one is particularly infuriating, because the cursor controls are kind of loose, making the precision shots the game demands of you almost impossible to make. This is only made worse because the hit detection on the Rhynocs is very picky. Oh, and if you miss a single Rhynoc, or hit a panda? You have to start the fucking thing from the beginning. Overall, though, these are minor in the grand scheme of things, since everything else is enjoyable. There is something that helps to mitigate these annoyances, though, and that's Auto Challenge Tuning. What is that, you ask? Well, it's exactly what it sounds like - depending on how you perform, the game will adjust the difficulty of whatever minigame you're playing. This means that if you keep screwing up in a mildly annoying sidequest like the Lost Fleet skateboard race with Hunter, the game will automatically make it easier for you. It's not always noticable, and those select few minigames are still kind of annoying, but it's a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to affect that shitty turret section, so... yeah, that's just another knock against that travesty. Soundtrack Want to know something cool? This game's music was composed by the former drummer of the band The Police, Stewart Copeland. And you know what? It shows. The music in this game is incredible. Each level, playable character, and hubworld has its own theme. These themes are catchy and upbeat, and fit the levels exceptionally well, especially since Copeland played the game's levels to compose a fitting theme for each. Some of my favorite tracks include Sunrise Spring, Evening Lake, Sheila's Theme, Sgt. Byrd's Theme, the Credits Theme, and ESPECIALLY Charmed Ridge, Fireworks Factory, Icy Peak, and the Super Bonus Round Theme. What more can I say? This game's soundtrack is glorious. Graphics While I'm not the biggest fan of the jaggy, pixelated look of PS1 graphics and prefer the anti-aliased, smoother look of the N64, I won't at all deny the graphical excellence of Spyro 3. All the environments are colorful and pleasant on the eyes. A particularly impressive feat is that there is no distance fog, but rather level geometry remains loaded all the time. The game runs on a special engine that makes heavy use of mipmapping -the game decreases the number of polygons rendered on an object the further away the camera is from it. This leads to the game having more convincing worlds than most others of the time, since you don't randomly see level geometry pop in and out of view. The character models are also nicely detailed, and still hold up decently today, if a bit jagged. Conclusion What else can I really say? Spyro: Year of the Dragon is an excellent collectathon and one of the best games I've ever played. The tight control, fun levels, well-designed difficulty, enjoyable side content, amazing soundtrack, and appealing visuals make this a must-play for owners of a Playstation or fans of 3D collectathon platformers. It's a great addition to your collection. As always, you have a few options to play this game. If you happen to own a PS2 or PS3, or even an original PS1, you could get the original game disc. One thing I will STRESS if you want this game - GET THE GREATEST HITS VERSION. It is by far the definitive version, as it fixes a few fatal glitches from the original Black Label version which, if triggered, will make 100% completion impossible. Another thing I recommend is to avoid getting this game on PSN, as it's the Black Label version, fatal glitches and all. However, if you don't feel like playing the original PS1 version, you could always get the Spyro Reignited Trilogy for either PS4 or XBOX One and play the game that way, as it features a nice graphical upgrade and (suppoesdly) a few control improvements to an already excellently-controlling game. However you play it, whether it be through the Greatest Hits version on PS1, Reignited Trilogy, or if you're a sadist who loves to torture themselves (original Black Label version), I'm sure you'll find something to enjoy. So there we go, my introduction into the Spyro series. I have to say, I love what I see so far, if this game is anything to go by (it is one of my new favorites, after all). Hopefully, the first two games - Spyro the Dragon and Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage - will be just as good. I have them aswell and I've played a bit of each, and so far, I'm enjoying myself with both. I can't wait to see what those games have in store. Also, I've recently got Super Castlevania IV, which is my first Castlevania game. The review for that game will arrive someday, but so far, I like that game quite a bit too. I might also pick up Super Metroid, one of my most-wanted SNES games, and review more Playstation stuff, as I did get a PS2 for Christmas. I have a PS3, but it's in use on a flatscreen, which would cause input lag. I tell you this because I had some PS2 titles, including Snoopy vs. the Red Baron and GTA Vice City, two games I'm fairly nostalgic for. With the PS2 I received the Ratchet & Clank trilogy and Jak & Daxter: Precursor Legacy, so reviews will also be out for those eventually. I also want to get the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy for PS1, another series I've heard is great, Pac-Man World, which I've also heard is a good platformer, and maybe some other hits on the system like Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, or even Silent Hill or Resident Evil. With that long-ass conclusion out of the way, I'll see you guys in my next post. Category:Blog posts